Pointillism Art

Last term we looked at some pointillism art. The pointillism technique was first used to describe the work of French artist Georges Seurat. Seurat, along with fellow artist Paul Signac, was inspired by the Impressionist paintings of the day. Seurat began to paint using small, distinct dots — points — of pure color. Below is one of Seurat’s paintings.

We first began to experiment with mixing colours by dividing a circle into six sections. In each alternate section we used the primary colors -red, blue and yellow – and filled each with dots. We then filled the empty section with the two adjoining colours, to create the illusion of a new colour.

So, for example, we combined red dots and blue dots to create the impression that the colour was purple. We then used yellow and blue dots to create the impression that the colour was green. In the last section we used yellow and red dots to create the impression that the colour was orange.

Hi 5/6 Class,
Wow! Your art pieces are amazing! I like the idea of experimenting with the circles and primary colours and then “mixing” the two primary colours together where the segments meet to make a new colour. It must have taken a lot of patience to complete the dot paintings. I have only tried dot painting once before. Can I ask what you used to make the dots on your paper? I have only tried it with cotton buds.
From Mrs Hurley 🙂

Thanks Mrs Hurley for your kind comments. Much appreciated! It certainly did take a lot of patience and time to complete our art pieces! It was also a very therapeutic activity! We just used our texta colors – fine tipped, and slowly worked our way around our design. Hope you have a try and that you are just as successful. Kind regards.